Thursday, October 21, 2010

Will X-Plane 10 Have X?

If I could have a dime for every email I have received that asks some form of "will X-Plane 10 have X" (where X is a feature or enhancement), I wouldn't need to actually work on X-Plane anymore. (If you think your email triggered this post, well, there are approximately 100 other users who have asked the same thing.)

Simply put: I have no idea and I'm not going to try to answer these questions any more. Here's why:

For as long as I have been involved with X-Plane, Laminar Research has provided free patches to the simulator throughout a major version run, and those patches have included not only performance enhancements and bug fixes, but also major new features.

So the question "will X-Plane 10 have X" can really mean one of two things:

Will X-Plane 10.0 have feature X immediately 'on the DVD'?

Will X-Plane 10.x ever have feature X in a free patch before the major version run is over.

I can answer the first question, because we are relatively locked down on what features are still on the table for 10.0 vs. what must wait, but I think it's at best confusing to do so. If a feature isn't on the DVD, it might be in a free patch within weeks; it might be available by the time you get your DVD. Whether a feature is on the DVD is of interest to us as we plan our release, but I don't think it actually makes a huge difference to users with internet connections.

Consider 64-bit - it's something we want to look at during the version 10 run but we're not going dig into it until after we get 10.0 out. So will 10.0 be 64-bit? No. But there will probably be a 64-bit patch available for free. I think you can see why I don't want to post "X-Plane 10 will not be 64 bit."

I cannot possibly answer the second question, because versions run over several years, and what we code for the end of the version run will depend on market conditions and technology that don't exist now. One of the nice things about patching X-Plane frequently is that we can revise our plans as conditions change.

Consider the question "how many cores will X-Plane 8 utilize" had you asked the question during X-Plane 8.0. When X-Plane 8.0 came out, the answer was "only one" and we had no road-map to change that. For that matter, multi-core machines were rare and exotic beasts at the time, so multi-core wasn't a priority.

Within the three years of X-Plane 8's major version run, we ended up supporting multi-core for scenery mesh loading, something that couldn't have been easily predicted at the beginning of the version run.

Finally, a note on release planning: now is absolutely not a good time to ask for features. The features that will ship in X-Plane 10.0 have already been determined, and since we'd like to ship X-Plane 10 sooner rather than later, I don't think there's anything you can say that would make us add a feature to 10.0.

All future features are going into a 10.x "bucket" for planning purposes. Since Austin, Chris and I are up to our eyeballs in code and the art team is red-lined too, we're not spending any time sifting through 10.x buckets right now. If you send us a feature request, the very best case is that we dump it in a holding list for later; the worse case is that we lose track of the request in the chaos.

That doesn't mean that we don't care about 10.x. It's just that we are very much heads down in the 10.0 release now and won't look up until it's done.

Ben, I understand max vis > 25NM is not related to download size and therefore such a feature could be in a patch.

However from what you've said in the past it is a big structural change to the engine. That being the case I would imagine that if it's not in 10.0 then such a big change is never going to be in a patch.

Anyway, even without > 25 NM max vis I'm sure XP10 will have a lot of other great features.

That was very funny, never has RTFM been so well illustrated! I think in these final stages Ben would be justified in preventing any more comments full stop, as they land the 747 in unpredictable weather and to a deadline. Oh, and while still debugging the EICAS..

I didn't even know we had less than 25NM visibility tee hee. On the other hand, as I look out my window.... I would not be disappointed if that didn't change but I suspect something will be different enough to satisfy Anon.

Upon reading the title I thought this was whether X-Plane 10 would be called X-Plane X, but no... it's all about "please explain."

I must admit though that I do have a bucket list and have been vocal about it on the org. In fact, my bucket runneth over and I'm satisfied that all that can be done will be done by XP10. Or 11. Or when hell freezes over '-)

You know what would be really cool is if you guys could program some suprise freak weather for people keep asking anoying questions. When they leave a yellow puddle around their computer chair a couple times they will stop asking anoying questions.

Ben seems like a guy with integrity and approves blog posts even if they are somewhat critical. Kudos to him.

This blog seems to be the best way for XP9 customers to communicate with Ben regarding XP10. If people don't continue to air their concerns regarding the 25 NM maximum visibility limitation then Laminar will think its not important and most likely let the feature drop.

Anyway I'm going to stop commenting on this post because Ben and the rest of the Laminar team obviously are very busy trying to get XP10 ready for release.

Even if max visibility remains unchanged XP10 will still be a major advance over XP9.